Rivian Assistant Makes Siri Look Overqualified

[electruck]

it was documented by Rivian:

Sponsored

 

[electruck]

I'll be curious to hear the OP's experience after a few days with memory enabled. That setting is not related to the bug I described above.

 

[SANZC02]

Well… turns out you were right

Memory was disabled in the app the entire time. Enabled it and hopefully this will be better.

That said, I think this actually highlights the bigger UX issue: if memory is critical to making the assistant feel intelligent, it probably shouldn’t be off by default. Most users will assume the AI is bad, not misconfigured.

Probably defaults to off because of privacy. One of the things it will do when turned on is remember your request and you can go back and see them.

 

[tate16t]

it was documented by Rivian:

Does this appear during the setup process? For such an important feature I think it should.

 

[tate16t]

Probably defaults to off because of privacy. One of the things it will do when turned on is remember your request and you can go back and see them.

That’s what I was thinking, but Rivian should make it known that it exists. It probably does show up somewhere during the set up process and we all just overlooked it.

 

[MichaelW]

Just installed the update and spent an hour playing with it. This "assistant" is horrible.

I asked "what can you do" and got 3 suggestions, 1 of which was "guess the song." I selected this option and the assistant explained that it would play a clip for me to guess. Each time, it just shuts off. When asked, the assistant says "I can't actually play the clips so that isn't something I can do." Then why is it the first thing it suggested?
Tried having it read from my Google calendar. Calendar is synced, it can only see events on my calendar (not shared with me) and can only access them if I know the exact name, time, date and cite it to the letter. Otherwise "no events found on your calendar."
Read messages? Nope. Notification on the screen but nothing happens. Press the assistant button, it does nothing. Ask it to read messages, "there are no messages."

In the age of some really capable LLMs why would we waist time developing this. Build an api for Claude and be done. Could probably write it with Claude code in an afternoon.

 

[DuoRivian]

No Rivian on the road currently has (nor ever will have) their upcoming RAP chip that comes along with the "205 GB/s of memory bandwidth that Senior VP of Electrical Hardware Vidya Rajagopalan described as key for AI applications." - Jose's article from this morning. It's maybe the one thing (more than LIDAR) that makes me wanna wait for the GEN release in R2...

RAP1 is for autonomy only from everything I have read. The infotainment chip (more advanced in R2 than Gen 2 R1) covers AI for the assistant and all other infotainment usage.

 

[freshpow]

That’s what I was thinking, but Rivian should make it known that it exists. It probably does show up somewhere during the set up process and we all just overlooked it.

IIRC it did show up during my setup process. Only way I knew to look for it.

 

[SwaziCAR]

I understand that I'm a dinosaur, and that I, unlike others, just don't care about this kind of stuff. But, I'll be dead within 20 years. Carry on.

 

[TexasBob]

I switched back to Alexa after my kids got mad that they couldn't ask it to play their songs from amazon music anymore, RA lasted for about 1 hour in our vehicle. I didn't find the voice commands that RA can do better than just pushing the buttons on the screen. I loved electrucks post, couldn't have said it better, 100% agree with him and all the other posts. Too early to tell if RA will be great. A cool feature would have been celebrity voices like TomTom use to do in the past.

Wait how did you switch back to Alexa?

 

[TexasBob]

I cannot get it to recognize or access any of my contacts. It is driving me insane. I see the contacts, they are loaded, but the assistant does not. (Also as a aside, this voice is sooo annoying.)

 

[BrayBay]

I switched back to Alexa after my kids got mad that they couldn't ask it to play their songs from amazon music anymore, RA lasted for about 1 hour in our vehicle. I didn't find the voice commands that RA can do better than just pushing the buttons on the screen. I loved electrucks post, couldn't have said it better, 100% agree with him and all the other posts. Too early to tell if RA will be great. A cool feature would have been celebrity voices like TomTom use to do in the past.

Yup, I switched back to Alexa as well. I don't have any of the other music streaming services since the Amazon Music that comes with my Amazon Prime did a good enough job for me. It's unfortunate the Rivian infotainment tied Alexa and Amazon Music so tightly. I'm hoping a future update would make Amazon Music a stand alone integration.

I suppose I could just use Amazon Music on my phone, but the Bluetooth connection is janky sometimes. In addition I would start hearing all of my phone's notifications.

 

[Mos Eisley]

RAP1 is for autonomy only from everything I have read. The infotainment chip (more advanced in R2 than Gen 2 R1) covers AI for the assistant and all other infotainment usage.

I thought as well though some of Jose Castillo's recent posts infer otherwise. He says he's working on a piece re: RAP and AI.

 

[electruck]

It's unfortunate the Rivian infotainment tied Alexa and Amazon Music so tightly. I'm hoping a future update would make Amazon Music a stand alone integration.

That wasn't a feature of Rivian's infotainment per se. It is a fundamental part of the Alexa stack as Amazon Music comes baked into all Alexa devices.

 

[DenisRL]

I genuinely appreciate Rivian trying to bring AI into the vehicle experience. That’s ambitious. That’s forward-looking. That’s the kind of thing that makes you feel like you’re living in the future.

Unfortunately, after using Rivian Assistant for several days, I can confidently say the future apparently runs on a 2017 Bluetooth speaker and mild confusion.

I’m honestly baffled by how far behind this feels compared to literally every modern LLM on the market. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini — all of them can hold context, remember what you just said, and generally behave like they’re awake.

Rivian Assistant, meanwhile, has the memory retention of a golden retriever in a laser tag arena.

Example:
Me: “Find that song I like.”
Rivian Assistant: finds it
Me: “Great, play it.”
Rivian Assistant: “Absolutely. Here’s a completely different song from three playlists ago that nobody asked for.”

It’s like talking to a very enthusiastic intern who got hit in the head with a Roomba.

And this isn’t some obscure edge case. This is basically the entire experience. Every interaction feels like the assistant is waking up from a nap, hearing one random noun, and making a panic decision.

At this point I’ve gone back to Alexa, which feels like admitting defeat in a futuristic society. That’s like buying a spaceship and then commuting via horse because the autopilot keeps driving into lakes.

What confuses me most is: why reinvent the wheel here?

Why not integrate Claude or another mature LLM provider? Because right now this feels less “AI-native EV experience” and more “two Raspberry Pis zip-tied together behind the dashboard running Ask Jeeves.”

Surely the token costs can’t be THAT bad. I refuse to believe we’re rationing GPU cycles like wartime butter.

And the frustrating part is that the vision is actually great. An intelligent in-car assistant should be a killer feature for Rivian. This SHOULD be the perfect environment for contextual AI.

Instead, my truck currently has the conversational abilities of a haunted GPS unit.

I want this to succeed. I really do. But today, Rivian Assistant feels less like “the future of driving” and more like your uncle discovering ChatGPT after two margaritas and saying “watch this.”

I agree with the comments. Also, why Takeaway some functionality I have with Alexa like accessing Amazon music? Also, why can’t bring an assistant find a particular station by name on SiriusXM Alexa could. My other issue is that Rivian assistance seems to be hard of hearing. Unless you shout the trigger phrase there is no response.

Sponsored